To readers: A number of articles on other court cases and
citizens' movements are in preparation and will appear in 2000.
Updates and commentaries will be added and/or modified periodically.
Names in this section are given in Western name order.

(1) The Chinese War Victims' Lawsuits

In the mid-1990s, many Chinese victims of Japanese war crimes
began filing lawsuits against the Japanese government. Currently
twelve separate lawsuits are taking place under the rubric of the
Chinese War Victims' Lawsuits. Of the twelve, one was appealed to the
Tokyo High Court (see below); the rest are still being fought in the
district courts. Each of the cases is concerned with Japanese war
crimes on the Chinese front, and the central issues include: the
Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, and indiscriminate bombing; forced
relocation to Japan and forced labor; "comfort women"; the
Pingdingshan incident (another massacre); and abandoned poison gas
and bombs. In 1998 alone, five Chinese plaintiffs (victims) visited
Japan to give testimony in court and to appear in public lectures.

On September 22, 1999, Chief Justice Ito at the Tokyo District
Court delivered the decision on one of the cases concerning the
Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, and indiscriminate bombing. The case had
been filed on August 7, 1995, and is the first of the twelve to have
been decided. While the decision recognized the sufferings of the
plaintiffs as historical facts, the plaintiffs nonetheless lost the
case. The decision was, at best, highly contradictory and its
argument seems in part to be illogical. On the one hand, the decision
did recognize as undeniable all the historical facts of Nanjing
Massacre, the live body experiments by the Unit 731, and the
indiscriminate bombing, despite some controversy regarding the extent
of damage. It also stated clearly that the plaintiffs suffered
terrible damages caused by those incidents. Further, and
unconventionally, the judge suggested that the Japanese government
sincerely apologize to the Chinese victims, and that it consider
seriously what it can do to build friendly relations with China.

On the other hand, the decision rejected the victims' claims,
holding that in this case, individuals do not have the right to ask
directly for compensation from the Japanese government. According to
international law, the judge stated, the issues of compensation for
damages caused by an enemy nation are generally resolved by
diplomatic negotiations between the nations, not by individual suits
against the former enemy nation. Regarding the war crimes committed
by the enemy nation, the victims as individuals could logically have
the right to claim for redress of the violation by the assailant
nation. However, he concluded, "considering the justice of the whole
human race, the problems of compensation with respect to former enemy
nations should be solved comprehensively by the postwar friendship
treaty between the nations, even if it is the case that each
individual's justice can not be restored in terms of civic law." Most
problematically, he found that "denying individual rights to claim
compensation for damage (in the case of war) is reasonable, if we
presume that avoiding another war is the supreme cause." It is
needless to say that the plaintiffs immediately chose to appeal the
decision to the higher court.

The headlines of most Japanese newspapers on the day the decision
was announced were relatively positive regarding the decision, citing
the judge's suggestion to the Japanese government for further apology
and consideration. The plaintiffs themselves were appalled when they
heard the decision, and stated at the press conference that the judge
was a coward (in that he was afraid to criticize the government). The
plaintiffs' chief attorney, Hiroshi Oyama (who was the head attorney
for Saburo Ienaga's textbook case), commented that it seemed the
judge began with the conclusion (of rejecting the victims' right for
compensation) and developed his desperate line of reasoning later.
Especially incredible was that the judge's view that individual
compensations could be the potential cause of another international
military conflict. The twelve lawsuits have been supported by the
Society to Support the Demands of Chinese War Victims, one of the
largest organizations of its kind. Saburo Ienaga, who has been known
for his long battle of textbook lawsuits became one of the core
members in the organization's representative committee, since the
major points of Ienaga's third lawsuit concerned Japan's war crimes
on the Chinese front. Other representative members include: Katsuichi
Honda, a famous journalist who has written several books on the
Nanjing Massacre, including _The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese
Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame _ (M.E. Sharpe,
1999); and Seiichi Morimura, the author of _Akuma no Hoshoku _
(The Devil's Gluttony), a book that publicized the war crimes of Unit
731. Some of the attorneys working on these lawsuits are the same who
fought Ienaga's textbook lawsuits. Currently, the Society is
conducting an international letter campaign supporting the "Nanjing
Massacre, Unit 731, and the Indiscriminate Bombing" lawsuit.

If you wish to obtain further information about the activities of
the Society and the progress of each suit, please refer to the
Society's Japanese-English bilingual Web site, or contact the
following addresses:

(2) The Takashima Textbook Lawsuit

The Takashima Textbook Lawsuit, filed in 1993, questions the
legality of government's textbook screening. Nobuyoshi Takashima, now
a professor at Ryukyu University, Japan, was at the time a high
school social studies teacher. Takashima has been an active advocate
for addressing Japan's war responsibility, and has organized numerous
study tours to Southeast Asia (especially to Singapore and Malaysia)
to hear and record the voices of the victims of Japanese invasion
(see below).

Takashima was one of the authors of the 1992 edition of the
"Contemporary Japanese Society" textbook, for which he wrote
two discussion columns. During the screening process, however,
finding it difficult to accept the Ministry of Education's requests,
he quit the project. The Ministry had ordered him to change (1) his
description concerning the mass media's excessive coverage of the
death of Emperor Hirohito, as well as (2) the manipulation of the
mass media by the multi-national forces involved in the Gulf War. The
Ministry also asked Takashima (3) to drop a quotation from Meiji
philosopher Yukichi Fukuzawa's "Breaking from Asia" (Datsua-ron),
which Takashima represented as an example of Japanese colonialist
thought of the period. In addition to Fukuzawa's quote, he was also
asked to drop former admiral Kaishu Katsu's words of more positive
evaluation of Korea (see below). The Ministry also suggested (4) that
Takashima change his descriptions of Southeast Asian countries'
responses to the dispatch of Japanese minesweepers to the Persian
Gulf.

The district court decision on the Takashima lawsuit was made at
the Yokohama District court, April 22, 1998, with Takashima gaining a
partial victory. He won two points (the judges decided that the
Ministry's suggestions to eliminate Katsu's words and to change the
descriptions of Southeast Asian countries' responses to the dispatch
of Japanese minesweepers were illegal). The results were not entirely
satisfactory for Takashima, however, because he had not won the point
concerning Fukuzawa's Japanese colonialist thought. He has appealed
the ruling to a higher court (the government also appealed to a
higher court).

At the appeals court (the Tokyo High Court), Takashima and his
legal team are focusing on the dispute over Yukichi Fukuzawa's
"Datsua-ron." In "Datsua-ron, " Fukuzawa argues that Japan should
build itself not as a part of Asia but by way of breaking away from
Asia. (Post-war Japanese researchers have termed his thought "Datsua
Nyuo" [Breaking away from Asia and joining Europe]). Takashima has
seen it as the beginning of a modern Japanese view, which, in looking
down on people of other Asian countries, mentally enabled wartime
Japanese to commit atrocities. (Takashima as a scholar also wishes to
reexamine Masao Maruyama's view representing Fukuzawa as a liberal
enlightenment scholar. Maruyama's view has, to date, continued to be
influential among the Japanese and Japanese textbooks of various
kinds.)

The dispute concerning Fukuzawa's "Datsua-ron" is closely related
to another concerning the passage Takashima quoted from Katsu
Kaishu's _Hikawa Seiwa_ (since, in including them, it was
Takashima's intent to compare Fukuzawa's view to Katsu's). The
Yokohama District Court has held that the Ministry's request that
Takashima reconsider the inclusion of passage was an improper use of
its power. _Hikawa Seiwa_ is a collection of Katsu's talks in
his last years. Seeing the argument for "Seikan-ron" (The theory of
conquering Korea) becoming stronger, and in light of the
Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), Katsu stated that "About Korea, [some
people] despise it as a country half ruined, or a country poor and
weak, but I think the time has already come for Korea to revive. . .
. It is just a recent phenomenon that [the Japanese] make little of
Korea. In old days, the seeds of Japanese civilization were all
imported from Korea. . . . Several hundred years ago, Korea was the
master teacher of the Japanese.

Outside his court battle, Takashima has been a well respected
teacher, researcher,and social critic. Takashima studied geography at
the Tokyo University of Education (Ienaga Saburo was a professor of
Japanese history there, but, according to Takashima, he was not
particularly interested in Ienaga's lectures or his lawsuit). He
graduated from the university with a masters' degree in 1968, and he
became a geography teacher at the laboratory high school attached to
the university. While teaching at the high school, he later taught
social studies education and other education-related courses at
several universities. He was also an instructor of high school
correspondence courses of NHK education television. He was
part-author of the geography high school textbooks published by
Jikkyo Shuppan, and, until he withdrew it, he was one of the authors
of high school contemporary society textbooks published Hitotsubashi
Shuppan. He has written a number of articles concerning social
studies education, the textbook controversy, and other areas of
education.

As a progressive and innovative geography teacher, Takashima
conducted field research on war atrocities, and this is perhaps what
distinguishes him most from others. He first began to visit Okinawa
in 1969 to collect some teaching materials, and while there he was
informed of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army during the
Battle of Okinawa. Around this time, very little had been written
about it in school textbooks, but he began to include the subject in
his teaching.

In 1972, he had the opportunity to tour the Malay peninsula, where
he saw the cenotaphs built for the victims massacred by the Japanese
army during the Asia Pacific War. Having known of the atrocities the
Japanese army committed in China (a subject he had included in his
teaching), he thus came to realize that the Japanese army had
committed the same kinds of atrocities in Southeast Asia. Upon his
return to Tokyo, Takashima looked for materials to teach about
Japan's war crimes in Southeast Asian countries. When he found almost
no such teaching materials available, he decided to collect the
stories of the victims by himself. Since 1975, he has gone to the
Malay peninsula every summer to conduct his research, and he has used
the materials he has gathered in his teaching. Since 1983, he has
organized more than twenty study trips to visit various sites of the
massacre and to record the voices of war victims in Southeast Asian
countries. The trips have been mainly for teachers, but prominent
scholars in Japanese modern history and education have also
participated.

The supporters of the Takashima lawsuit include teachers and
scholars, some of whom have formed an organization called The Support
Group for the Takashima Textbook Suit (Takashima Kyokasho Sosho o
Shiensurukai). The suit was originally filed in Yokohama, and he has
worked with 125 attorneys in the Yokohama area.The trial has been
moved from the Yokohama District Court to the Tokyo High Court, so
the support organization is now looking for more volunteers from the
Tokyo area. If you wish to learn more about his case, please contact
the Support Group at the following addresses:

(3) Saburo Ienaga's Third Textbook Lawsuit,
1984-1997

Saburo Ienaga's thirty-two-year challenge to the Japanese
government's textbook censorship came to an end in August 1997, when
Japan's Supreme Court, consisting of five judges, handed down its
decision on his third lawsuit. The court avoided addressing Ienaga's
central claim of the unconstitutionality of the state textbook
screening, but it ruled in his favor on several points, including
ones regarding his descriptions of Japan's wartime conduct. Moreover,
in delivering his opinion, Chief Justice Ono, specifically stated
that Japan's school textbooks should include descriptions of the
suffering Japan's past aggression had caused its neighbors, and that
such inclusion constituted a positive educational consideration.

It was 1984 when Ienaga filed his third lawsuit against the
Japanese government. In that suit, as in the first and second suits,
Ienaga's central objective was to demonstrate that state screening of
textbooks was unconstitutional. To make his case, he attempted to
prove the Ministry of Education's abuse of power in requesting eight
specific revisions of descriptions in his textbook. Of the eight, six
involved wartime issues: the use of the term "aggression" (shinryaku)
to describe the Japanese invasion of China, the description of
Nanjing Massacre, the reference to Japanese soldiers' rape of Chinese
women (in Nanjing as well as in Northern China), the reference to
Unit 731, the reference to Korean resistance against Japanese force
during the Sino-Japanese war, and the description of the Battle of
Okinawa.

Regarding Ienaga's points concerning the Nanjing Massacre and the
rape of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers, the Ono decision
basically supported the 1993 Tokyo High Court decision, which awarded
Ienaga a partial victory. In a footnote of his 1980 text, Ienaga had
originally written this about the Nanjing Massacre: "The Japanese
Army killed numerous Chinese soldiers and civilians immediately after
the occupation of Nanjing." The Ministry, in order to eliminate the
impression that the Army had carried out a systematic killing,
ordered Ienaga to alter the sentence to either "Chinese soldiers and
civilians who were involved in the chaos (or confusion) were killed"
or "Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed by the Japanese Army
during the chaos (or confusion)." Ienaga finally changed it to "The
Japanese Army, breaking through the strong resistance of Chinese
Army, occupied Nanjing in a rage and killed numerous Chinese soldiers
and civilians," and the Ministry approved.

In the third lawsuit, the illegality of state action was disputed
in terms of both the cause of the Massacre (whether the Massacre was
an organized act of the Japanese Army) and the time line (when it
should be understood as having taken place), because the phrases
addressing those points were the ones that were actually altered and
removed. The Tokyo High Court ruled that the phrasing representing
the Massacre as happening because of "rage" was a one-sided
explanation, and that, therefore, the state's order to compel Ienaga
to change the original phrasing was illegal. It ruled, however, that
the period in which the Massacre occurred was not limited to the
period "immediately after the occupation," and that, therefore, the
state order was legal. The basis of the decision was "the commonly
accepted academic view of 1984."

Concerning the point of the rape of Chinese women, Ienaga wrote in
a footnote of his 1983 text: "When occupying Nanjing, . . . not a few
of the Japanese officers and men raped Chinese women"; and in another
footnote: "Because of this [meeting with fierce resistance from
Chinese guerrillas in northern China], the Japanese Army almost
everywhere caused immeasurable damage to lives, chastity, and
property of the Chinese people, including the killing of local
residents, . . . and the rape of Chinese women." The Ministry ordered
Ienaga to eliminate the mention of rape in both footnotes because, it
argued, "rape [in war] by military officers and soldiers is a common
phenomena all over the world, so that it is inappropriate to refer
only to the rape committed by the Japanese Army."

The Tokyo High Court made a distinction between the rape that
happened in Nanjing and the rape that happened in the northern part
of China, and ruled that the research reporting the frequent rape
that occurred in Nanjing had been sufficient, but that it was
insufficient in the case of the rape that occurred in northern China.
Thus, the court found that the Ministry's order to remove the
reference in the first instance (with respect to Nanjing) was
illegal, but that it was legal with regard to northern China. The Ono
decision basically supported that court decision, but not
unanimously. Judges Ono and Ozaki, in their minority opinions,
opposed making the distinction between the rape that took place in
Nanjing and the rape that occurred in northern China, and stated that
the Ministry's order to eliminate the reference to rape should be
considered entirely illegal.

While in principle supporting the lower court decision on the
above points, the Ono decision ruled in favor of Ienaga on one
additional significant point--the one concerning the reference to
Unit 731. Ienaga wrote a footnote in his 1983 text: "In the suburbs
of Harbin, [the Japanese Army] established a bio-warfare unit called
Unit 731 and continued to commit atrocities such as capturing
non-Japanese, for the most part several thousand Chinese, and killing
them in live experiments conducted over a period of several years,
until the Soviet Union's declaration of war." In its screening of
that passage, the Ministry ordered Ienaga to remove the entire
portion describing the Unit because, it argued, "it is premature to
include the reference to Unit 731 in school textbooks, since credible
research, i.e., articles and books, has not been presented." Ienaga
was thus forced to eliminate that particular passage completely.

The Tokyo High Court ruling found with the state on this point,
regarding the scholarly research on the Unit (as of 1983) as
insufficient. The court regarded Akuma no Hoshoku, one of the first
three books written on the topic by Seiichi Morimura, as diverging
from a true academic form of writing. The Ono decision, however,
ruled that the Ministry's order to eliminate the description of Unit
731 was illegal, because, no scholarly work had denied the existence
of Unit 731 and its cruel experiments. Interestingly, Judge Sonobe,
in his opinion supplementing the decision, denied a point that school
textbooks cannot include description of events that have not been
fully elucidated, arguing that, for a variety of reasons (e.g., the
death of the persons involved), many wartime events cannot
necessarily be cleared up with respect to such particulars as the
cause, development, and the exact number of victims.

Ienaga's third lawsuit focused more on the issue of the depiction
of "history" than did the first and second. Though some may feel that
Japan's judicial system has recently been attempting to determine
what constitutes historical facts, and what correct textbook
descriptions were, this is not really the case. In most cases, the
courts considered whether the requests made by the Ministry of
Education in the process of Ienaga's textbook screening were
"reasonable" (the criteria used by the Tokyo High Court), or
"unerring" (that of the Supreme Court), in light of commonly accepted
academic views.

For the most part, the courts avoided entering the historians'
debate; rather, they seem to have built rules of textbook writing and
authorization. By and large, the courts took a position that the
Ministry's requests should be based on facts verified by the academic
research of the time. In that sense, the decisions, especially that
of the Supreme Court, will put pressure on the Ministry of Education,
since, strictly speaking, it cannot ignore "commonly accepted views"
and "verified facts" in history studies when it imposes its views on
textbook authors. However, as pointed out by Judge Sonobe's opinion
above, it is often impossible to verify every particular of wartime
events because of loss or destruction of the records, or because of
the death of all the victims-as illustrated by the case of Unit 731.
The judges' opinions show that they debated this point without coming
to a unanimous conclusion.

Another interesting feature of the Ono decision is its implicit
reference to Japan's current right-wing history revision movement,
led by Nobukatsu Fujioka of Tokyo University. Fujioka's movement was
outside the lawsuit, so the Supreme Court judges did not directly
refer to the movement or its argument, but several of the judges
included implicit references in their opinions. As Judge Sonobe
stated: "It is undeniable that the actual situation of the wartime
events such as the Nanjing incident . . . has in part been unknown to
this date; however, it does not mean that the Nanjing incident . . .
did not happen." This clearly refutes the logic used in the
right-wing revisionist discourse of "Nanjing incident as an
illusion." Even Judge Chikusa, who opposed the decision that the
Ministry's request concerning Unit 731 was illegal, admitted the need
for letting the younger generation understand accurately Japan's past
acts, even when those are disgraceful to Japan.

Chief Justice Ono's opinion is especially notable. First of all,
he argued for further restrictions regarding the occasions upon which
the Ministry would be allowed to request revisions. Then, he directly
quoted the words of Ryotaro Shiba, a popular historical fiction
writer who died several years ago, and whose work has been
appropriated by the history revision movement to justify its position
and appeal to the public. The quotation was: "A nation telling a lie
in the textbooks . . . would eventually be ruined." Thus, the words
Ono quoted speak directly against that movement. Further, in his
opinion, Ono argued strongly for writing about Japan's wrongdoings
during the war and its colonial rule in Asia.

Because of his age and poor health, Ienaga decided not to file
another lawsuit; however, he expressed his full support of another
textbook lawsuit, one filed in 1993 by Nobuyoshi Takashima (a former
high school teacher, currently a professor at Ryukyu University)
regarding the screening of a textbook on "contemporary society" (a
high school subject). In April 1998, at the Yokohama District Court,
Takashima won a partial victory (see Takashima Textbook Lawsuit).

As Ienaga's textbook lawsuit concluded, the major organization
supporting Ienaga's lawsuits, the National League for the Support of
the School Textbook Screening Suit, disbanded, having served its
purpose. Another grassroots organization, Citizens Thinking of the
Textbook Issue, which was organized in the early 1980s, also ended
its activities. Currently a new organization called Children and
Textbooks Japan Network 21, is developing a network to counter the
right-wing nationalist movements in education (see Children and
Textbooks Japan Network 21).

For further discussion of Ienaga's textbook lawsuit and the
Japanese textbook controversy of 1990s, see a special issue of
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 30, No. 2 April-June 1998,
and Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Censoring history: Citizenship
and war in the twentieth century, New York: M.E. Sharpe
(forthcoming).

(4) Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21

Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21 (Kodomo to Kyokasho
Zenkoku Netto 21, hereafter CTJN21) was established in August 1998.
Basically, the organization is intended to succeed the National
League for the Support of the Textbook Screening Suit, the major
support group of Saburo Ienaga's textbook suit, which disbanded when
Ienaga's lawsuit was concluded in August 1997 (see Saburo Ienaga's
Third Textbook Lawsuit, 1984-1997). The organization's representative
committee members include Hiroshi Oyama, Itsuko Teruoka, Rumiko
Nishino, Giichi Fujimoto, and Masami Yamazumi. Yoshifumi Tawara is
the secretary general of the organization.

CTJN21's major interest is to democratize Japan's textbook
production and adoption systems, so its bimonthly newsletter
regularly reports on the latest developments of Japan's Ministry of
Education's textbook policies, national and regional struggles over
textbook adoption issues, and other textbook-related news items, such
as the Takashima textbook suit (see the Takashima Textbook Suit). In
particular, the newsletter always features the latest changes in the
Ministry's curriculum guidelines and its textbook screening policies
and practices.

The organization also occasionally issues public statements. For
example, in 1998, it issued a public statement requesting the
resignation of Shoichi Nakagawa, then Minister of Agriculture,
Forest, and Fishery. While speaking in a press conference, Nakagawa
had expressed his doubt about the legitimacy of the inclusion of a
reference to comfort women in school textbooks, because in his view
it could not be said clearly whether or not the coercion of comfort
women took place. In 1998, along with six other organizations, the
CTJN21 also lodged a protest against the Ministry of Education when
it became known that a textbook company had revised the description
of the Yasukuni Shrine in its high school politics/economics textbook
because of indirect pressure from the Ministry and the right (e.g.,
in the media, some Diet members, and Yasukuni Shrine).

Most recently, the CTJN21 has mounted a significant effort to
report on the issue of the coercive enforcement of the national flag
and anthem in schools at all levels. In August 1999, the legislature
passed the National Flag and Anthem Act, which designates Hinomaru
(Rising Sun) as the national flag and Kimigayo ("Your Sovereignty," a
song praising the emperor's sovereignty) as the national anthem.
While the Act does not speak of implementation of singing Kimigayo
and raising the Hinomaru in schools, the right-wing nationalists are
now openly arguing that schools should, and in fact many public
schools at all levels have begun to do so. The CTJN21 has thus been
gathering and reporting information about the coersive enforcement of
singing Kimigayo and raising the Hinomaru in schools. It has also
reported that the Ministry of Education has informally requested
textbook companies to revise their descriptions of the flag and song
in their textbooks.

The CTJN21 takes up various kinds of educational issues, such as
children's rights, school reform, school choice, class size
reduction, youth delinquency, school violence, corporal punishment in
schools, and sexism and racism in schools and textbooks. It also
promotes peace and justice education. The CTJN21 holds occasional
study meetings and gives lectures. Currently, its membership has
expanded to 1740 (including 97 groups), making it one of the largest
organizations of this kind. It encourages citizens to establish their
own local chapters, plan their own activities, and form networks with
other citizen groups.

Yoshifumi Tawara, who has been working for a textbook company and
been actively involved in the democratization of textbook production
and adoption processes, was named the secretary general of the
organization. He has long been a workers' union activist in the
publishing industry, and is currently one of the most active writers
criticizing the right-wing nationalist movement in history education
led by Tokyo University Professor Nobukatsu Fujioka.

Tawara's recent publications report and discuss the nationalist
movements' attack on textbooks, including references to the issue of
comfort women. See, for example, Dokyumento "Ianfu" Mondai to
Kyokasho Kogeki (A document: The "comfort women" issue and the attack
on textbooks) (Tokyo: Kobunken, 1997) and Kyokasho Kogeki no Shinso:
"Ianfu" Mondai to "Jiyushugishikan" no Sajyutsu (The Extent of the
attack on textbooks: The "comfort women" issue and the trick of "the
liberal view of history") (Tokyo: Gakushu no Tomosha, 1997).

For further details of the networks' activities, please contact
the following addresses:

(5) Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center and the
Violence Against Women in War-Net Japan

The Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center was established in 1995 as
an extension of the Asian Women's Association (AWA). Yayori Matsui,
an internationally known feminist journalist, became its first
director. The center has been making efforts to establish a linkage
to, and exchange information with, women's NGOs and feminist
activists worldwide. It focuses on the following six areas as its
main concern: (1) women's movements in Asia, (2) women's human
rights, (3) women in development, (4) women and the environment, (5)
violence against women in war and armed conflict situations, and (6)
women's international cooperation.

Matsui, a feminist activist in Japan, has long been concerned the
issues of women of Asia. Her major interest has been in the issues
regarding economic inequality and women's human rights in Asia, and,
along with many other activities, she has been involved in campaigns
against sex tours in Asia. Her recent publications include Women's
Asia (London: Zed Books, 1989). In reflecting Matsui's own view, the
center pays close attention to Japan's role in the development of
Asia in terms of women's experiences.

The center has been concerned with the safety of Asian migrant
women in Japan, including those "trafficked" women who are recruited
into the Japanese entertainment/sex industry, the improvement of
working conditions of women employed by Japanese multinational
companies in Asia, and the welfare of migrant women and international
marriages in Japan. The center is well organized to support NGOs
working for women's issues, and, following the 1995 World Conference
of Women in Beijing, it has taken as active role in preparing for
post-Beijing conferences.

The center has developed a number of programs and activities
including the publication of Women's 21st Century (quarterly,
Japanese) and Women's Asia 21-Voices from Japan (annually, English),
organizing "Women's Empowerment Seminar" and "Women's Study Tours,"
leading several research groups, and coordinating domestic and
international workshops and conferences. Now, it also opens its own
library. In recent years, the center was also involved in the
campaign on the issue of wartime "comfort women." It supports the
survivors of Japan's military sexual slavery to demand the Japanese
government take legal responsibility. The Violence Against Women in
War-Net Japan (hereafter, the VAWW-Net Japan) was formed from this
effort.

VAWW-Net Japan was formed out of the International Conference on
Violence against Women in War and Armed Conflict Situations held in
Tokyo in November 1997. At the conference, more than forty
international participants gathered from twenty countries including
South Korea, Philippines, Serbia, Uganda, Srilanka, India, Cambodia,
and East Timor. It examined the realities of violence against women
under war and armed conflicts, and discussed the redefinition of the
violence against women, the abolishment of sexual violence, the
restoration of the justice of victims, and the strengthening of
support. The conference concluded with the Tokyo Declaration
commiting itself to world demilitarization from the perspective of
women's human rights.

Following the conference, an international coalition VAWW-Network
was formed of conference participants to include women of similar
interest from various places in the world. The international
VAWW-Network exchanges information and its members' views through an
e-mail (and fax) network. In Japan, the concerned participants of the
conference also formed the VAWW-Net Japan to continue their efforts.
It became the most active center regarding the movement, demanding
formal compensation from the Japanese government for "comfort women,"
the victims of Japan's military sexual slavery. The VAWW-Net Japan
has launched campaigns for the issue of "comfort women," lobbying the
Japanese government as well as international communities.

The net is currently planning to hold a women's international
tribunal for Japan's military sexual slavery (in Tokyo in December
2000). The international tribunal will attempt to examine concrete
cases of violence committed by Japan against women during the period
of Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945). The net also tackles the issue of
sexual violence connected to the presence of U.S. military bases in
Asia, and promotes women's actions aimed at creating peace. Among
members of the network, Rumiko Nishino, a feminist journalist who has
written numerous articles on the issue and spoken out in many
occasions, is taking a very active role in leading various activities
of the net.

Currently, the Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center is looking for
volunteers interested in working for its various programs and
activities. The VAWW-Net Japan is also inviting persons from
within/without Japan who wish to participante in the international
tribunal. If you wish to have further information about programs and
activities of the Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center and/or VAWW-Net
Japan, please contact the following addresses: